


Sylander Week 2017 - So Suddenly

by 3amepiphany



Series: Sylander Week 2017 [1]
Category: Wander Over Yonder
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 09:56:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9884855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: Sometimes it hits you. Or it doesn't. Or, it does, awkwardly, and you don't know how to stop being clumsy or how to stop apologizing for it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's Sylander Week! Kicking it off with this prompt fill: http://omegalovaniac.tumblr.com/post/157595402469/sylander-prompt-how-do-you-say-i-love-you-in

It took a long time but the day Wander didn’t flinch when Sylvia raised her fist to slug him in the arm, she stopped.

Absolutely just stopped and looked at him, wide-eyed and jaw a bit slack. He, of course, still had the last joke they’d been laughing at still there at the corners of his mouth. She shook the motion out instead of following through and that seemed to take a lot of effort from her - Wander, being Wander, noticed this. He turned to look at her and she gave him a big smile.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, buddy. That was a good joke, I needed that.” she said, nodding a bit. “Thank you.”

He didn’t press it further.

After that, though, Sylvia watched herself a bit closer. She did her best not to slam him too hard on the back so hard that Hat would fall off, or shaking him by the shoulder so roughly that he’d topple over, or turning hugs into noogies.There would be awkward transitions into moves and eventually it became hard for Wander to see how she was telegraphing this, and it was causing him a lot of accidental bumps and bruises. Almost as much as she’d caused in the start of their friendship together.

So many apologies flew from either side of it and eventually that became the dance, and it was going so failingly well until one quiet afternoon, after a good meal on the outskirts of the town they had just left, that Wander laid back on the soft, pink grass and said, “Syl, I keep thinkin’ about how nice it would be to meet the people what raised you. Tell ‘em what a good job they did, you know?”

She looked down at him very earnestly - and probably a little sadly, she felt, she wasn’t really sure if she could hide that when it came to this specific matter - and said, “Don’t think too long about that.”

Which seemed to be taken incorrectly. Wander pushed himself back up on his elbows and said, “Aw, really?”

“Well, I mean. They’re a galaxy over. It’s not just like I can hop in an Orbble, and get to the nearest space gate as quickly as my feet will carry me.”

“...Sure you can. I’ve seen you run. You won one of the biggest races in this quadrant.”

“After how many losses? But,” she said, laying back, too, and enjoying for a moment the cushy feel of the grass under her, “it’s family. And it’s a bit of a touchy subject.”

They were both quiet for a bit before Wander ventured, “I don’t mind touchy.” She knew he knew what she’d meant by ‘touchy’, and she also knew to anticipate him changing the subject. Which was what he did. “I feel like maybe you haven’t been your regular ol’ self lately and I worry.”

Sylvia was about to interrupt and tell him, of course she wasn’t. He was the reason for that. Everything she was before she’d even seen his poster in that bar back on the Verucan Salt Mine in the Meteor Stream, she was losing. And if she was going to be honest, it felt like a fight. That was who she’d worked hard on becoming after leaving the restrictions and expectations she’d had at home. The sadness. She was tired of losing things and only wanted to gain and so it was a definitive struggle for her to get to this point. Why would he want to see what she was before he knew her as he’d found her? Or she found him? Or, oh, however that had happened, she couldn’t really say anymore as cryptic as he’d been about that. But what he said next kept her from interrupting. What he said next was more or less what had been hanging over them for the last short while.

“You’re bein’ awful gentle with me. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“...I wouldn’t call two black eyes in the space of a month gentle, but okay.”

“Well, alright, that’s a fair point. So lemme rephrase it in sayin’ that you’ve been pullin’ your punches. I didn’t even say a word and you started doin’ it. Like you realized your strength and you’re holdin’ yourself back, now, and it’s weird.”

She snorted. “The intent was to give you _fewer_ black eyes. I’m not sure about the route I should take at this point, it just seems I’m destined to give you lumps.”

He laughed, a wheezy, whimsical little sound. 

“But for what it’s worth I’m sorry. That’s what Zbornaks do, you know? We’re these tough and gruff and rumble-tumble creatures. We crack our knuckles on each others’ faces when they feel a little tight. We crack our faces on each other’s knuckles when we have an itch we need scratched. Granny does all the landscaping of the boulders in the yard by hand, that’s her hobby. Mom was known to break hearts, literally, just busting ribs whenever she decided she didn’t like a guy. My brother Phil still has this callous bald spot on the back of his head where our Dad used… to… give him noogies,” she finished weakly.

They lay there, watching the virds in the sky fly overhead in the warm heat of the triple suns, and for a second she felt like her very gut was crumpling in on itself. Like she was imploding. She felt a bit dizzy, too, in this overwhelming feeling. She very gently grabbed at the grass on either side of her and tried her best to keep from sinking into the earth beneath her, or from flying out into space, for that matter, either.

Wander waited patiently and for a good while before asking if she was okay.

Sylvia sighed, feeling grounded enough to try words again, and she said, “Zbornaks, we do that stuff. You know. But I think one of the greatest things about us, one of the greatest memories I have of home was the love between my parents. Zbornaks showed this sort of thing worlds differently than wrestling your kids until they fall asleep right there in the living room because they’re so exhausted. It takes so much more for us to not… do that.That’s good, social affection and it’s very welcome no matter your relationship with the other party you’re tossing around like shotputs and kettlebells. It takes so much more for us to not immediately think we’re going into a headlock when we’re hugged. Or like you’re going to gore someone’s face off with your horn when they go in to give you a kiss. Or that you actually may have to keep someone from breaking your rib cage and --”

“I’m really sorry but that’s… can I… that’s super descriptive. I don’t want you to think that you’re bad at tellin’ stories, it’s just that I don’t know that I can stomach some of them.”

She laughed, an overdue and loud sort of guffaw that sort of bubbled up and out of her as if she were a fountain free of debris after so long. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Wander said, holding back a laugh of his own.”

“To be tender and gentle is a sign of deep, deep respect for the Zbornak you love. It’s a complete 180 from everyday shows of friendship and endearment. It’s a very visceral vulnerability.”

“An incredibly influential bit of information,” he said, alliterating softly but pointedly in response to her. It pulled another laugh from her, and she was grateful for it. “It’s always a beautiful day when you learn to tell someone you love ‘em in another language or culture.”

She looked at him again as she did that day when she decided she didn’t want to slam him in the arm over a good joke. “Well, when you think about it, plenty of other species and peoples probably do that, too. They probably do a lot less fighting to agree on things and beating one another up by way of saying thanks.”

“I know a lot of different ways to tell someone you love them. For what it’s worth, though, I’m still learnin’,” he said, adding that last bit as an aside between the two of them. Not that there was anyone around, but he did it anyways. She laughed again.

“You know…. You know, I think in a way, you’re not wrong.”

“About?”

“I did realize my strength, Wander.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s you,” she said, and then she held her breath, looking back up at the sky and feeling the urge to just stare at one of the suns until she couldn’t see anymore, but then finally relaxing completely, exhaling and inhaling again when he laughed, easily and kindly. She found she had been grabbing at the grass again, and some of it came away in her hands, this time, and she felt bad about that. She ran her fingers through it carefully as if to apologize to it in a way, spreading her arms out away from her a bit and coming upon Wander’s hand on one side of her.

He didn’t flinch away. Neither did she.

They held each other’s hands quietly for a short bit before Wander spoke up. “You gotta teach me how to respond to that because honestly, the best kind of love is reciprocated love, no matter what language or culture. Knowledge gained, you know. Knowledge and understanding and a connection gained. Love gained.”

She looked at him again, and saw him smiling at her still, and the clarity that she saw in that moment through him was so much more blindingly brighter than those suns, combined.


End file.
